CHINA PLANS WATER WARS WITH ASIAN NATIONS

DRAVIDA PERAVAI wrote to Hon’ble Thiru.Manmohan Singh Prime Minister of India and Hon’ble Thiru.S.M.Krishna Minister for External Affairs Government of India :Justyfying China-phobia and appealing to counter Chinese expansionism detrimental to world peace….

Thailand, chairman of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for 2009, will be hosting the 15th ASEAN Summit and related meetings during Oct. 23-25 in southern beach resort town Cha-am and Hua Hin, media reports. In this crucial time, Dravida Peravai, a political party from India appeals to India to discuss with the leaders of ASEAN countries the inevitability to ponder carefully each and every move of China and arrive at a common strategy to counter its conspiracies. We from India welcome regional cooperation but at same time we would like to caution the nations of the ASEAN through you about the geo-political ambitions of China which will erode the other nation’s sovereignty and cause great havoc to their economies.

1. Beware of attack on Dollar regime: India and China are now members of the Financial Stability Board, the apex institution to monitor global risks of financial crisis. Their voting shares in the International Monetary Fund will also be slightly increased through an accelerated quota reform process. However post-reform the USA will retain its de-facto veto power with a 17 percent share and the US, EU and Japan will control 53 percent of IMF shares. Individually the shares of US, UK, France and Japan will still be larger than China’s share of fewer than 4 percent. Hence China had planned a new offensive according to Professor of National Institute of Public Finance and Policy Mr.Sudipto Mundle. “Zhou Xiaochuan, Governor of the Chinese Central Bank on the eve of G-20 summit suggested that dollar should be replaced with SDR’s as the new reserve currency. The huge dollar reserves held by Central Banks and other global investors would be severely eroded if the dollar were to suddenly depreciate. Yet these investors cannot easily diversify away from the dollar since this itself would trigger dollar depreciation. The Chinese are particularly concerned that an estimated 1 trillion dollars of their total reserves of around 2 trillion are held in dollar asset. The SDR exchange rate is a weighted average of exchange rates of the major convertible currencies. Accordingly under Zhou’s proposals, China and other countries could convert their reserves from dollars to SDR’s at current exchange rates without any erosion in their value. Implementing such a proposal would also mark the end of the dollar as reserve currency. This is the game plan of China which has let the cat out of its bag. If China launches SDR missiles to strike at the Dollar regime, India and all ASEAN countries economies will collapse. USA realizing the Chinese designs had been urging India to sign End-use Monitoring Agreement, Communications Interoperability and Security Memorandum agreement, and Logistics Support Agreement. China causes grave concern for USA, hence USA urges India to sign these pacts. China had become emboldened to say to USA to concentrate on western Pacific and China will look after eastern Pacific. Pacific Command Chief Admiral Timothy J Keating had recently exposed this game. It is high time that all those ASEAN nations which are boasting about Free Trade be aware of the future assaults on dollar that will boomerang on their currencies and collapse their economies. India had to wage a diplomatic offensive against China.

2. Beware of Counterfeit currencies: The crime of counterfeiting currency as a means of warfare, such as in the War Between the States in the USA in the mid-1800s and the Bernhard Operation in Europe during the Second World War is practiced. India is being flooded with counterfeit currency. The idea was to overflow the India’s economy with fake banknotes, so that the real value of the said money was reduced; therefore, attacking the economy and general welfare of a society. The INTERPOL Counterfeits and Security Documents Branch (CSDB) is responsible for establishing programs that provide forensic support, operational assistance, and technical databases in order to assist the 188 member countries of INTERPOL regarding counterfeit currency. PTI, Indian news agency reported this year about Indian businessmen given Chinese counterfeit currency at an International Exhibition in China. Hence all member nations must be made vigilant about flooding of their countries with counterfeit currencies. Hence India should seek special investigation by Interpol pumping counterfeit currencies in India and ASEAN countries.

3. Unilateral Maritime Boundary by China: China had gone for fixing unilateral maritime boundaries of the nations of South China Seas as recently reported in Times of India by seasoned diplomat G.Parthasarathy. This does not augur well for the fishing industry and fishermen of nations bordering South China Seas. International Seabed Authority had earmarked 1, 50,000 square kilometers in Indian Ocean for India to explore cobalt, manganese, Copper and nickel etc. Similarly the ASEAN countries more particularly ASEAN countries with access to South China Seas will be having rights over specified areas for them as per International Sea-bed Authority. In exercising such powers they will realize that China had put a spokes in their wheel by unilaterally encroaching their respective maritime boundary or violating the exclusive economic zones. So let common wisdom be evolved among ASEAN nations to be vigilant about the ASEAN plus nation called China. India should play its role as catalyst.

4. China gets foothold in Arabian Sea: The location of the Republic of Maldives astride the major sea lanes in the Indian Ocean is of strategic relevance to India. — Ministry of Defense’s annual report, 2000. 27 July 2001: China has engineered a manner of a coup by coaxing Maldives’ Abdul Gayoom government to let it establish a base in Marao. Marao is one of the largest of the 1192 coral islands grouped into atolls that comprise Maldives and lies 40 km south of Male, the capital. Coral islands make fine submarine pens. The Peoples’ Liberation Army Navy or PLAN proposes to deploy nuclear submarines fitted with sea-launched Dong Feng-44 missiles and ballistic missiles (SLBMs) in Marao. The base deal was finalized after two years of negotiations when Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji visited Male on 17 May 2001 on his four-nation South Asian tour. It marks a high point in China’s ambitious – and audacious – plan to encircle India and choke its emergent blue-water navy in the Indian Ocean itself. But once Marao comes up in 2010, China’s power projection in the Indian Ocean will stabilize. It will also set China on the course followed in the earlier superpower, Cold War rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union. Both states built a series of naval bases throughout the world for emergency counter-offensive measures. China is embarked on doing the same. American worry: These developments have worried the US that has proposed to its ASEAN allies and friendly countries to create a joint command to contain China and prevent its expansion in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. The US is keen for India to hasten construction of the Far Eastern Naval Command in the Andaman Islands, and this was repeated by the chairman of the US joint chiefs, General Henry H. Shelton, who visited India recently. Specific to the Marao base, the US sent navy chief Dennis Blair to Maldives a month after Rongji’s visit to take stock of China’s military diplomacy. While the US base in Diego Garcia can launch surprise offensives, the US wants to restrict Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean because of its strategic value. According to one survey, some $260 billion worth of oil and gas will be shipped through the Indian Ocean by year 2004. The oil route stretching from the Strait of Malacca to the Strait of Hormuz will be at the mercy of any power that dominates the sea lanes. A Chinese base in Marao islands puts it in a direct position to influence oil commerce. It is a prospect that daunts India, scares Southeast Asia, and alarms the US. We appeal to ASEAN summit to think about their sea-lanes and its safety in case of differences with China.

5. China-Pakisthan-North Korea Axis: As late as October 2000, Pakistani and North Korean nuclear and metallurgical scientists were invited to observe the mating of miniaturized nuclear warheads and missile systems at China’s Lop Nor nuclear facility in Xingjian province. Of all the nuclear weapon States, China uses nuclear and missile technology transfers as part of its national security policy. It is not a coincidence that both Pakistan and North Korea owe a greater part of their nuclear and missile capabilities to China. Both were seen as important to realizing the twin goals of Beijing’s Asia policy: “contain India and restrain Japan”. The U.S. Ambassador to China, Clark Randt, has gone on record to describe China’s proliferation of strategic technologies as “a make-or-break issue for us.” That China was the chief instrument by which Pakistan got its bomb is well-known. What is not so well-known is the growing North Korea-Pakistan nuclear and missile nexus. While Pyongyang has served as a conduit for ballistic missile supplies to Pakistan, the latter has shared its weapons-capable highly uranium enrichment technology with the North Korean regime. Furthermore, Pakistan (along with China and North Korea) has a growing military relationship with Myanmar’s military junta. It is noteworthy that Myanmar had last year granted sanctuary to two Pakistani nuclear scientists wanted by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) following a personal telephone call from Musharraf. The two nuclear scientists, Dr Suleiman Asad and Dr Mohammad Ali Mukhtar, were flown to Sagaing Division of Myanmar in November 2001. They were apparently moved out of the country to avoid the fate that befell their two other counterparts, Dr Bashiruddin Mehmood, the former chief of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, and Chaudhury Abdul Majid. Both Mehmood and Majid are under investigation for their alleged links with Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network. Myanmar’s growing links with Pakistan’s nuclear establishment assume significance in the light of the formers recent purchase of a nuclear reactor and a dozen sophisticated MiG-29 fighters from Russia and conventional arms shopping in North Korea. Myanmar, North Korea and Pakistan are militarist regimes, weak and failing States that have initiated conflicts against their neighbors. Islamabad and Pyongyang also have a penchant for engaging in a game of brinkmanship, belligerence and nuclear blackmail and coercion to change the territorial status-quo (at times with overt and covert backing from Beijing). Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to and from radicalized, nuclearized and volatile Pakistan or the unpredictable, regime of North Korea or military-dominated Myanmar and Wahabi clergy-dominated Saudi Arabia certainly does not bode well for peace and stability. says Professor of Security Studies at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, Honolulu, U.S.A. India must evolve suitable counter strategy. In fact USA-USSR cold war is past but Indo-China Cold war is ground reality.

6. South China Seas: Vietnam must be vigilant: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Tan Dung pledged to properly handle border and South China Sea issues on Friday while hailing bilateral trade and economic ties between the two. He pledged to work along with Vietnam to cope with the international financial crisis, promote trade and speed up cooperation with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Vietnam will keep high-level exchanges, stimulate trade and two-way investment as well as cooperate with China in regional economic development programs, Dung vowed to properly settle the South China Sea issue and other problems via friendly negotiation with China so as to preserve the development of bilateral ties. As the rotating president of ASEAN, Vietnam will play a positive role in boosting ASEAN-China cooperation, Dung acknowledged. But Vietnam must be made to think of Mekong River waters, which it wont receive due to Chinese water aggression. India must generate this awareness to Vietnam

7. MONOPOLIZING MEKONG RIVER and CHINESE: This is bad news for the 60 million people that live in the Mekong Basin. For the many poor people who depend on the abundant resources of the Mekong River, their source of protein and livelihoods from fisheries and other aquatic resources have not been affected so far by the China’s designs over Mekong. The Basin is home to fisheries that yield about 2.5 million tons of fish per year and, at first point of sale, amount to an industry worth at least US$2 billion annually. It is the largest inland fishery in the world. These communities depend on the river as a resource, and are often outside the mainstream economy. They are insulated from global economic fluctuations precisely because they depend so closely on natural systems and not the broader economy for their survival. This is the strength of the natural river system; especially the biodiversity and productivity of the wetlands, marshes, swamps, ponds, lakes and flood plains, and it underlines why the river system is so important for poverty alleviation. Mekong and its tributaries are vital links for transport and commerce in the region. A pragmatic and internationally accepted way found in the 1995 Mekong Agreement, which Cambodia, the Lao PDR, Thailand and Vietnam signed when they established the Mekong River Commission (MRC). The MRC is the intergovernmental body responsible for cooperation on the sustainable management of the Mekong Basin, whose members include Cambodia, the Lao PDR, Thailand and Vietnam. In dealing with these challenges, it looks across all sectors including sustaining fisheries, identifying opportunities for agriculture, maintaining the freedom of navigation, assessing the sustainability of hydropower, flood management and preserving ecosystems. Superimposed on these are the future effects of more extreme floods, prolonged drought and sea level rise associated with climate change. In providing its advice, the MRC aims to facilitate a broad range of dialogue among governments, the private sector and civil society on these challenges. The MRC is working with its member governments and upstream partners, China and Burma, to ensure these factors are taken into account when planning water-based development in the region. But you all are aware that China refuses to join the MRC, while building dams across Mekong River. In 1986 China started constructing dams across Mekong River and it has now completed the 4 th biggest dam that will dry the entire Mekong River basin for which Mekong River Commission had been established by 5 countries of South East Asia. Mekong is the worlds 11 th longest river and all such plans to block the river waters within China will create great havoc and cause human losses in the countries of Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam where Mekong empties itself in South China Seas. There won’t be any water, when all waters are arrested within China. Hence ASEAN leaders must emulate the protest lodged by Thailand Prime Minister Thiru.Abisit Vejjajiva on August of 2009 with 11000 signatures. The irony is instead of putting up a united front against Chinese water aggression, Laos , Cambodia and Thailand had woken up to construct dams within their countries leaving the tail end Vietnam to suffer like Tamilnadu in India, where states like Karnataka and Kerala show adamancy in water hijacking.

8. DIVERTING BRAHMAPUTRA: Yangtze, Indus and Brahmaputra originate in Tibet now under Chinese possession. Half of the population of the world lives in the river basins of rivers that emanate from Tibet. Brahmaputra is known as Yarlung Tsangpo River in Tibet. China is diverting that river waters to Yangtze known as yellow river, which flows within China. 750 Hydel power stations have been set up across Tibet. As per World Commission on Dams statistics of 2003 there are 22000 dams across China. We have no objection for China to harness its rivers that emanate and flow within its territory. But blocking Indus by dams and Pakistan protesting is another story. Indian silence over Brahmaputra waters being diverted shows sad state of Indian bureaucrats in slumber. International Rivers cannot be hijacked by one country. The Campaign Director of International Rivers.org Mr.Aviva Imhof states that “The head waters of most of the major rivers of Asia are in Tibet and damming them could have implications downstream.” Hence, Dravida Peravai urges Indian Prime Minister and Indian External Affairs Minister to discuss threadbare with ASEAN leaders the River Waters Issue, which is more serious than any other issue in their agenda.